I literally fell for her; tripped over and fell on her, on the sunny, gritty beach of Virginia Beach. I wasn't spiritually... emotionally lost, I believe; but, what we "believe" is so very often wrong. I suppose I was inactively, instinctively hunting something ... something I almost felt, but couldn't as yet begin to verbalize.

Anyway, because of muggers, mad dogs, and badly driven cars, I'm always very aware of everything and everyone around me, when I take my morning run; but, it was late in the day. So, maybe because my flight'd been delayed or because I'd become strangely out-of-synch or...?

My mind was ... fixated on a problem, now entirely forgotten, as I turned my head, toward the frightened, anguished cry of a lone sea bird, who sounded ... terribly and despairingly lonely to me ... and, somehow, devastatingly lost. And, in gazing aside at the bird, for all of two blind seconds, I knocked her down, onto the sand-a brown woman, in a long, potato sack, calico dress.

What a face!

An American face of excellently blended African and Native American genes, with a healthy little dollop of European   blood, a terribly agitated face, as she fetally balled up in great pain and wouldn't let me look at her injured ankle.

I explained that she could "trust me", that I knew what I was doing, when I wasn't "knocking defenseless young women to the ground". She didn't laugh, slightly chuckle, or even crack the tiniest of a smile, and from furtive, dark eyes, she gave me a shaky, cursory once over-at the brown skin over hard-angled facial bones, at my black hair and dimly Asian eyes.

I have a lot more than "a healthy dollop of European blood" myself, from Dad's side, which explains the beard [a recent addition] and the general curliness of my hair, which I've let grow to its own rule for months now. But, despite the Old World genes, I look most like my mother's Peruvian-Incan/Mexican-Mayan, New World genes.

I told my hapless victim my name was Benn, Bennet Gillespie.

She took a more thorough, ill-at-ease view of me into her head, which was covered with tousles of...dark brown ringlets, which in the sunlight had auburn streaks, speckled with very premature silver. The sterling was incongruous with her physical youthfulness; but, the heartrending glance from those eyes hinted that it was well earned. Finally, she stared into my eyes, then nominally stopped cringing and gazed downward--as her ("demure" came oddly to mind) ... as her demure signal permitting me to have my way with her, so to speak.

I checked her injury.

She had the shapely legs of an athlete or dancer, and wore battered out, lowheeled ankle boots, that were slightly Victorian or Edwardian or one of those old "-ian" styles, laced over soft, thick socks. The ankle moved stiffly, painfully. The footgear was in the way, so, I began unlacing to better ascertain how bad off it was, because sometimes there are hidden breaks and misleading damage.

She abruptly realized I was actually opening her boot and flinched away, shrieking at me; but, the small boot and sock slipped off into my hand. She fell silent, completely mortified, then started crying, wailing, in fact, lying flat back in the sand.

Besides the swelling I'd caused, her ankle had a deep cut. Not an immediately recent cut, that I might have caused her, but a deep, nicely healing, surgical one-and I know this because my mother was a surgeon and she'd made me take "real" medicine classes and be her assistant, to go with the rest of my training.

This cut was nicely, cosmetically stitched; but, I bet you, and I'd win, that the seam was there to repair something grossly traumatic.

She was lying there sobbing actual tears. I know because I pulled her hands away from her face and checked. However, whether the tears were also actually genuine...? I glanced up and down the beach and saw absolutely no one else around for continents. The nearest anything was a lonely looking, one-story beachhouse behind us, that was showing no life or interest in us, and I had a little insight.

She attempted stopping me, as she sat  up and wordlessly defended her secret, until finally allowing me, in mute, humiliated   resignation, to unlace the other boot--that stiff and pained ankle was also restitched. Both of them were sewn quite a way around, like a can opener makes a cut around a lid, until it's nearly severed. However the original lacerations had been made, it hadn't been by penknife or train wheel--I've seen the resulting cuts of both of those on the human body; these'd been done by something in between.  

I asked if she lived nearby, I suggested I call for an ambulance, or I could carry her to my car at the hotel a mile or so back up the beach, and she obviously hated all my ideas. Noisily so. Who'd think so much mournfully, piercing sound could come out of such a perfect mouth. I began considering that she might be completely inarticulate, then, I had another insight-with her ankles this raw, she had to've come from nearby. I asked her, quite specifically, where she lived.

She clammed up like a petulant child and really didn't want to answer that, so I told her if I couldn't take her home, I'd have to take her to a hospital. I couldn't just leave her there, like a beached wha--.

It was a Scottish accent, hurried and harried, from a probably usually pleasant but now distressed, slimly roundish and handsome, middle-aged woman in her fifties, who glared at me, as if she already hated my very existence.

"I fel...we bumped into each other and she's bruised, maybe even sprained her ankle. It's a little hard to tell ... with all the other damage."

"My young lady hasn't torn open her   wounds, has she?"

"No, ma'am; but she refuses to go to the hospital, or tell me where she lives. Where--?"

"For shame, Ms. Day. You know, quite well, you're not allowed out here alone. Why did you come so far out, without me? And so close to the water?" The Scot wanted to chastise more but apparently felt my rocking and sobbing victim/patient was already in enough piteous grief.

"Is she all right? Can she walk?"

I shook my head "no". The younger woman's leg was...well, both legs were enough of a problem, but her tremulous demeanor wouldn't get her anywhere. I told the Scot I'd play beast of burden and carry--"Ms. Day", if I could be pointed in the right direction. I picked the young woman up and she smelled of fruit, of peaches and vanilla; some sort of shampoo, I thought. The weepy thing stiffened, then calmed and relaxed in my arms, as I followed the older woman, carrying her socks and boots, to the same beachhouse I'd spotted behind us.

If it had a style name other than beachhouse, I wouldn't know. I have cousins in the Yucatan with a shack on the beach, at the edge of the jungle where, on our vacations as children, we caught snakes and milked them of their venom for cash from a New York City researcher, who "wasn't good" with poisonous serpents. This house wasn't huge but it was no shack, either. The Scotswoman was its live out housekeeper, as she led us in and found a proper place on the sofa for me to place my shapely charge.

"What's this all about, Mrs. Gorbachev?!"  

The Scot, Mrs. Gorbachev, explained our situation to the late sixties, early seventy something, Anglo-English master of the house, a Mr. Hopkins, who seemed even more suspicious and disdainful of my presence than the Russian Scot. He didn't want me touching his ... whatever "Ms. Day" was to him. Then, he called her his "daughter"....

Plenty of people don't look anything like their parents; plus...he could be a foster or step--.

I suggested my hosts have someone look at her injury and in the meanwhile I could make a poultice--.

"A what?"

Yeah, like he wasn't old enough to have heard or probably worn one himself sometime. Probably back during The Blitz, The Great War, or that little altercation between Generals York and Washington even. Something about the man pissed me off. I think it was just him-not because he was English, or much older, but because he was...him-whoever he was. I took a step to leave and Ms. Day grabbed my hand, tightly. She dug her sharp, natural, and hard, little nails into me, not to hurt me, but plainly because she was afraid for some reason.

She shook her head "no", then began saying "no", over and over, and when I moved, she stood up abruptly, which had to have hurt her legs a great deal. She continued clinging to the flesh of my arm. Her begging me to stay could have been nice, if her nails hadn't been gouging me, nearly to drawing blood, and if the other two people in that uncozy, expensively appointed house hadn't glared at me, as if I'd put her up to it.

I tried peeling her off me and getting her to lie back on the sofa, but she wouldn't heed me, and she certainly wasn't listening to either of them. Actually he was no help at all, and managed to make everything worse, as he barked sharp orders at her. Condescendingly, I felt. I did wonder if Day's middle name were Night. He snapped at her to "behave like an adult" and to let me, "the stranger", go about my business, etc. That sounded condescending, too. It was getting out of hand, and I was losing needed skin cells to her clawing.

Mrs. G, however, had a simple idea.

"You know, sir, how she detests all those doctors you brought her here to see. Ms. Day, do you want the gentleman to stay?"

Day instantly looked at the woman in relief without letting go of me. Hopkins, old bean, was very pissed at the question. I thought I could, perhaps, help all concerned, and suggested, if I could leave for an hour or less, I could grab some things from my hotel, some herbs--.

"'Herbs'?" He pronounced it like a man's name.

I explained to him that I was a curandero, a trained and licensed healer. That got a big harrumph. I also added I was the son of a surgeon. He asked why I wasn't a "doctor" doctor. Maybe it was his stentorian tone of voice that annoyed me. Then again, it was none of his business--okay, it's a sore point of mine.

I merely reminded him, instead, that since she was refusing to go to the hospital, her leg might become infected, or at least hurt a hell of a lot, for a hell of a long time, making her more lame. Even in America, gangrene still occurs, which can lead to amputation. Also, as temperamentally highstrung as she'd been since I'd met her, neither of them would get any rest sleeping or fetching and carrying for her every second, which they'd ... which Mrs. G'd most likely had just stopped doing recently, because   of the ankle surgery.

I explained that as a well-trained, experienced, and highly sought after curandero, I always carry or can find herbs, oils, and teas to soothe, calm, and take down the swelling of most any infection or injury. The treatments might even urge her to sleep for awhile. I kept it to myself that I thought she was being juvenilely bitchy; however, I suspected the beauty was something of a headcase, or at least terribly spoiled rotten somehow.

What a waste.

Neither of them had a better idea of what to do with her, in order for them to handle her, as she refused to listen to or be touched by them; so, Hopkins, in his extreme reluctance, agreed to let me return. The really hard part came when I tried to extricate myself from Day. Finally, I convinced her I was coming back, "soon", by setting her attention on the ancient gold locket I wore around my neck.

It has a childhood photo of my sister and me, and one of my mother; my dead mother. I was reaching for simpatico involvement from Day, to affect her and get her out of herself and more focused. I slipped the locket, hanging on its black cord, from my neck onto hers. Her possessing it, in payment against my return, seemed to satisfy her enough, and she let me go.